Occasionally, John Hughes gave signs of being able to write comedies
for adults as well as for teenagers and children; his best grownup
effort is probably this erratic but often funny road movie. It's
essentially Oscar Madison and Felix Unger cast adrift in the wintry
Midwest, the Odd Couple on wheels (and as such is far better than 'The
Odd Couple II,' which literally was Oscar and Felix on wheels). It
keeps threatening to be better than it is, and Hughes keeps returning
Steve Martin and John Candy to a kind of equilibrium, so that neither
is caricatured as much as always seems about to be the case.

This sense that at any moment, the movie could get really bad,
continues throughout the film; it creates a kind of tension, but it
isn't necessarily a good kind of tension -- this is hardly a suspense
film, after all. This uneasy anticipation stems from Hughes hauling in
slapstick whenever things seem to be slowing down, but the rest of the
film is in a more realistic mode. He doesn't have a firm grip on the
movie's style, but fortunately Martin and Candy do.

John Candy was a great, great sketch comic, as anyone who saw "SCTV"
can attest. Though tall and fat, he threw himself with vigor into any
characterization, from self-pitying playboys to Julia Child. His broad,
energetic performances were tempered by his imagination and his great
sense of timing -- but they weren't really characterizations, and it is
in that area that he always had a handicap. It was very difficult for
him to disappear into a character; his work as an actor almost always
seemed to be all surface, no depth -- sketch comedy. While he was
peerless in those sketches, this didn't work well on screen; he was at
his best when his characters were flamboyant (as in "JFK"), at his
worst when he had to be the central character, since he so easily
became maudlin.

But not so here. For once, his broad, chuckling performance and the
role are a perfect match, and when he has to be serious, you have the
sense that it's the character becoming serious, not John Candy
pretending to be serious. It helps that his character, Del Griffith, is
a traveling salesman; the suggestion of pretense is entirely
appropriate. Only rarely does Hughes require Del to be a clueless
clown; the rest of the time, the comedy comes out of his character, not
the situations. "The last thing I want to be," declares Del, "is an
annoying blabbermouth." But of course, that's what he is, and he knows
it.

Steve Martin is also fine in a fairly uncomplicated role. Neal Page is
an ordinary guy, a little stuffy, reasonably well off, but anything but
colorful. Martin is allowed to let fly with a couple of his patented
rages, though. Page, though, is not always presented as the hapless
victim of Del's ineptitudes; some of their problems arise from his
refusal to take much responsibility for what happens to them.
Furthermore, when Del describes him as a tight ass, we -- and Neal --
realize that's exactly what he is, and this brings out the worst in
Del, though unwillingly. You have to wonder if Del would have been such
a disaster if he hadn't met Neal.

They're trying to get to Chicago (from New York) by Thanksgiving. Even
before Neal meets Del, Griffith has caused him problems; he's not happy
when they end up as seatmates. He's even less happy when weather forces
the plane to land in Wichita, and that one catastrophic circumstance
after another forces him to continue to team up with Del as they wend
their way toward Chicago.

That's all there is to the story: this mismatched pair having to work
together to get to Chicago, but it's pretty funny most of the way. The
ending is sentimental and contrived, but it works because for once
Hughes doesn't push it too far. (See "Uncle Buck" for an example of
what can happen when he does.) This is a long way from a comedy
classic, but it and "The Breakfast Club" are Hughes' two best movies.

It was reasonably successful, too, which makes it even stranger than
Paramount has released this DVD without any extras. Yes, they've
provided a clean letterboxed print, even enhanced for 16X9. But where
is a commentary track by Hughes or Martin? Where is even the making-of
short that almost certainly was filmed at the time? The disc lacks even
a trailer, the bare-minimum extra these days. No one even points out
the little cameos by people like Michael McKean, Kevin Bacon, Edie
McClurg and Ben Stein.

Still, the print is good, and the sound robust and well-mixed. There's
an excellent song score and some scant original music by Ira Newborn.

'Planes, Trains and Automobiles' is slick, facile and obvious, and
borders on the sentimental, though it never quite topples over. Hughes
sets up a success/disaster, success/disaster formula and follows it
slavishly all the way through the movie without any variations. This
makes the movie repetitious -- but it also keeps it pretty funny all
the way from New York to Chicago.